I’d put myself in a vulnerable position of paying someone in Fayette County for an alibi? That would’ve just been an invitation to get more money extorted out of me.”
He had a point. I wasn’t sure I was buying it.
“Tell me how you did it, Hart. Why’d you keep score in Trey’s blood?”
“I didn’t, goddamn it, Jordan. I didn’t shoot Junebug and I didn’t kill Trey. Why would I? Why would I kill Trey? He’d forgiven me; Nola told you as much. He’d come home. He’d come to see me. He wanted nothing to do with Clevey’s schemes. He’d nearly died and he didn’t want to be away from the people who had loved him!”
Hart stood and I motioned him back down with the rifle.
“No!” he yelled in defiance. “Go ahead and shoot me. Do it for me. You don’t think that I’ve wanted to kill myself? For God’s sake, I didn’t enjoy killing Rennie Clifton! I didn’t even mean to! And killing Clevey was horrible-I used his own gun on him. He begged me not to, he said he was sorry, he cried for his mother, and I still forced myself to shoot him!
“I’m a Quadlander, for God’s sake! I killed a girl and paid money to a scumball because I didn’t want anyone to know that a Quadlander was gay! But I’ve made myself into something truly awful, a murderer, so just shoot me now. Shoot me now.” He sank back onto the couch, broken.
I lowered the rifle. He was right about Trey. His motive to kill him had vanished with Trey’s forgiveness.
“Look at me, Hart.”
He glanced up, seeing me and the rifle lowered. “You believe me.”
“Yes,” I managed.
“Thank you. I’m sorry about the girl. And I’m sorry about Clevey. I’m glad you know I wouldn’t have hurt Trey.”
I didn’t answer. Motive, opportunity-think. And a collage came to me, like the lightning that’d thundered over Mirabeau the past week, cracking through the veiling clouds. Fragments of repeated conversations. Photos passing through my hands. A cryptic message scrawled in blood that I had placed far too much reliance on. And Trey’s begged request to my sister before she fled his house. It pointed, horribly, to one person.
Realization hit me with the brute force of a punch. I nearly dropped the rifle. Hart looked at me like he thought I was having a heart attack. Oh, God, let me be wrong.
“Jordy?”
“Where’s your phone?”
He pointed. I dialed home. Two rings. Three. My heart stopped and started. Four. “Hello, Poteet residence.” Clo’s voice, moderately cheerful, a little breathless.
“Clo. Where’s Mark?”
“He and Bradley took off with Scott.”
I forced breath into my lungs. “Where’d they go?”
“Over to Scott’s, I believe.”
“Clo, listen, this is very important If they come back, make sure they stay put. The boys must stay where they’re at.”
“Okay, Jordy, sure.”
“Fine, I’ll be home shortly.”
I hung up and dialed information. Please, God, let Nola have a phone already. The operator had just come on when I heard a knock at Hart’s door, and a timid, “Hello? Hart sweetie? It’s Nola.”
I slammed the phone down. Hart and I looked at each other. I kept waiting for him to scream out a crazy man was holding him at gunpoint. He stayed quiet, watching me with old eyes.
Nola bounded into the den, smiling at Hart, not seeing me and the rifle at first.
“Hey there, sugar pie, you don’t mind a little company for a while…” Her voice faded as she saw me with the rifle hooked under my arm, the haggard Hart, the bulleted vase. “What the hell’s this?”
“Nola. Where are the boys?”
She pointed at my rifle. “You answer me first. What’s that for?”
“Never mind! Where are Mark and Scott? ”
She pointed over her shoulder. “They wanted to go down by the creek… down by the graves.”
I bolted past her, shoving her out of my way, and dashed into the dark night.
20
Cloying mud pulled at my boot heels as I ran from the house. “Mark! Mark! Get to the house!” I screamed, hoping he could still hear me.
The clouds scudded over the moon, darkening the night into pitch. The porch light from Hart’s house provided hardly enough illumination to see my own legs as I tore across the gravel road, down the creekside to where two generations of Slocum men lay in eternal slumber, one in murdered sleep. I couldn’t let it happen again.
Branches tore at my face as I ran through the woods down to the creek. I stumbled over a ropy mass of roots, and cussing, skidded into the mud, tumbling head over heels. The rifle flew out of my hands and slid into the darkness. Still yelling Mark’s name, I pulled myself to my feet, trying to spot the rifle. And a bullet exploded into the tree next to me, spraying bark and oak.
I went back down to my knees and scrabbled behind the tree. I could see vague outlines near the graves of Louis and Trey: two, maybe three boys. Who else was there?
“Uncle Jordy!” Mark hollered. “Stay back, stay back! Scott, you asshole, don’t shoot, it’s Uncle Jordy!”
“Scott, listen to me! Listen! You don’t have to do this, let’s talk.”
Scott’s voice, when it came back, was petulant. “I don’t want to talk. Don’t run at me in the dark, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” I called back. Of course I wasn’t, but while Scott Kinnard was blasting away at trees he wasn’t hitting human flesh. “Let’s talk, okay?” Tentatively, I stood and began to walk down toward their voices. Wondering if each step would be met with a bullet. I needed the rifle, but I couldn’t spend minutes searching for it. The night held quiet.
Scott let me within ten feet of him, and as moonlight dimly slid along us as a cloud parted I saw Mark standing over his grandfather’s grave, keeping a trembling Bradley an arm’s length behind him.
“Go away, Jordy.” Scott’s voice was toneless. Not scared-not crazed-and that was more chilling. He sensed his control and he had a child’s smugness. The. 38 in his hand was rock still.
I kept my voice steady and assured. “No, Scott. I won’t go away. If you’re going to kill Mark, you have to kill me, too. And your mom and Hart are up at the house. I don’t think you can make this look like an accident.”
“Kill me?” I heard Mark repeat softly. I couldn’t see his eyes, but the realization charged the air between us. “He wants to kill me?”
“Scott. Listen to me. This won’t work. I know you killed Trey.”
“ What? ” I heard Mark sputter.
“That’s a lie! I loved Trey!” Scott shrieked. He was pointing a gun at me; he’d killed a man, but he still sounded like a child. An angry, temperamental boy who’d lashed out with rage at a wish denied.
“You loved him too much,” I started, hearing Nola and Hart rushing toward us in the undergrowth, Nola calling her son’s name. “You loved him, but he wasn’t going to stay. He wanted to go back to my sister and Mark. And you couldn’t stand that. You couldn’t stand that he was going to be like your mom’s other boyfriends and leave you. So you shot him dead.”
Scott didn’t speak. Mark seemed frozen in horror. Nola, breathless, managed to grab at my arm.
“You’re lying, lying! Scott wouldn’t hurt anyone!”
“Then have him give you the gun,” I said calmly. “And we’ll go back up to the house and talk about it.”
Nola’s fingers tightened on my arm. The moon glimmered from behind a wall of cloud and I could see her weathered face staring at her son in abject shock.
“Scotty, honey, give Mom the gun.” She took a step forward.
“No. Stay back, Mom, please. Go back to the house.”
“Honey-”
